Product Review: Iomega Storage Servers Page 3

The NAS unit itself runs on Windows 2000. Configuring the appliance involves first setting it up to work on your network  either assigning it a fixed IP address or setting it up to get an address automatically from a network hub. If you've set up a workstation on your LAN, you can do this.

Next, you need to create disk volumes, folders, and "shares"  places on the RAID system where users can store or back up their files. You can configure permissions for a disk volume or folder so that only the owner or an administrator can access it or so that everybody on the network can.

For sophisticated users, the configuration options available are almost endless, but most small businesses will only need a few. If you've configured a workstation hard drive for use over a network, you can do this.

For our test, we set up a folder in the default "public" space on the RAID in which to back up one network PC. Then we installed the Iomega Automatic Backup software.

The Backup software works much like others of its kind, although we found the interface simpler and more intuitive than most. You first use standard Windows file selection dialogs to select the "source" folders and files you want to back up. You can also use "filters" to exclude files of certain types  such as temporary files.

Next, you choose the "target"  the folder or volume on the NAS unit  which, again, you select by browsing in a Windows Explorer-like dialog. At this point, you can also decide to save revisions of files or not. If you need to preserve the original version of a file when it's modified, the backup software will do that, or you can choose to simply update the backed-up version.

Finally, you select schedule settings. The default is "back up my files every time my source changes"  meaning the backups are made over the network as you create and modify files.

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You can alternatively choose to look for changes at defined intervals  every so many minutes or hours  and do the backups then. Or you can tell the software to back up at a particular time every day or on selected days.